Omar Saleh, Microsoft’s oil and gas director for Africa and the Middle East, said that over the next five to ten years the greatest threat to the oil and gas industry is artificial intelligence (AI).

Speaking at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition Conference, Saleh said that technology disruptions in last three years has been a “wake-up call” for oil and gas firms. He warned that AI would be of “massive importance” to the industry over the next decade both in its ability to assist and endanger it.

As the technology becomes smarter and proliferates further into the industry, many firms are already embracing the idea. In a report, the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Digitalization & Energy department stated that AI “offers a great deal of promise.”

“AI could be used to analyze well performance, troubleshoot underperforming fields, suggest corrective actions and even deploy robots to carry out tasks…It could also enhance reservoir modelling, and thus aid operations by rapidly detecting and correcting suboptimal production behavior.” the report went on to say.